I’m writing this in the last minutes at my desk before I pack it all in and leave on the Rally. It’s dark and quiet in the house, but I can hear Ken getting dressed upstairs, getting ready for whatever the day brings us. Yesterday was packing day. It’s the day when we organize all of the things we’ll need to camp and cycle our way across Ontario and into Quebec, more than 600km all the way to Montreal. You get two bins, and you can put anything in them you like. I like to split it up – all my camping things in one bin – my tent, my sleeping pad, my blanket and the stupid camping pillow I bring every year because I suppose I’d rather use that than haul a full size one. (Apparently, since I do it every year.) The other bin gets clothes, cycling stuff, toiletries – and I presume that it is where everyone on the rally puts their yarn and needles.

I am not 100% sure, but I think that is a picture of everyone who has yarn in their bins on the rally this year. I love everyone in that snap, and not (just) because they are knitters. I was watching them all pack up yesterday – putting things in bins, hugging and laughing together, already the tight little knot that we’ll be all week and it struck me that what I love best about them is how committed this team is to taking care of people, both each other and the world they live in.

The weather forecast for today is horrible. Not just bad, or a bit rainy… horrible. Cataclysmic. The worst possible cycling weather. “Special Weather Statement” kind of weather. That statement says things like “heavy rainfall” “multiple thunderstorms” “flooding.” There is every possibility that we will be riding 122km tomorrow in nothing but rain, from the minute we gather to depart, all through the day until a bunch of exhausted, wet, dirty people have to set up tents in a deluge, and then lie in it all night.

We are all hoping this doesn’t happen. Sometimes the forecasts are wrong, sometimes storms just miss towns or cities or groups of cyclists. Right this minute there is only a drizzle. Here in Ontario sometimes these epics are swept out over our great lake to make crashing waves and dramatic scenes and not at all dump on people on bikes and we have our fingers crossed for that. We all spent yesterday trying to laugh it off and not worry about while simultaneously checking the weather for here (Toronto) and where we’re cycling too (Port Hope) to see if maybe it had improved. (No luck yet. Feel free to continuously check the weather as many times as you like too – more people worrying about it can only help manifest the skies we want. If you want to try this, think “tailwind” as well.)

We did something else yesterday – I watched all of Team Knit quietly decide, one by one, that we will double down on caring for each other. The longer we were there the nicer we all got. The Rally is hard, we are always sweet to each other on the road, finding extra kind words, getting someone a coffee, waiting for them so they’re not alone – these gestures are what our backbones are made of out there. All of our success is built on helping each other through it, doing your best to lift someone else knowing that they will lift you, and this exceptional difficulty calls for exceptional kindnesses. I saw as each member of our little pod decided that the way they would find their way through this would be by floating someone else. It works, and it is so lovely when it does.

It is the way the Rally is too, a couple of hundred people all working together deciding that helping someone else is so often the best way to help yourself- whether it’s helping someone change a flat, or deciding that you will use some of your time each year to fundraise and ride through a tsunami to change the lives of grownups and kids with HIV/AIDS.

It works, and it better, because frankly, the weather looks like trash all week.

Team Knit would like to thank you for supporting us and helping us. We’d like you to know that when you donate you lift us up too – and that we can feel that you’re on our team. Many hands make for light work, and the tiniest donation ripples into a big help when it goes into the pile with the rest of the knitters, and we are so, so grateful that you know that and give to this cause. We are all almost at our goals thanks to you, but as always we have hopes to leave those goals in our formidable wake.

Off we go.

1. This morning I’m drinking coffee and getting ready to go ride 100km with Jen’s daughter Fenner. Fenner (I’m sure you know) is part of Team Knit for the third year and the fact that I’m going anywhere with her without Jen and nobody’s calling it babysitting still freaks me out.

2. I’m also feeling kinda freaked out about The Rally in general. We leave in 8 days and if I were to make a list of the things that I have to do before we leave it would be longer than this blog post. (Someone said to me the other day that they’d love to do the Rally but they don’t have time and I didn’t say anything because I was (rather uncharacteristically) wordless.) For starters, everyone on Team Knit has at least a full time job, and besides that if anyone has a minute to figure out why my office will not stay clean for more than 4 minutes every time I clean it I would be very much in their debt. The upside of working this hard to get things done before I take a week “off” is helping to keep me from freaking out about the riding part, which remains something I have way more than a healthy respect for. 660km is no joke.

3. If any one of you ever hears me say again that I am going to knit a hoodie- especially an intarsia one, I would like you to come over here and slap my needles from my hands, preferably so that they make a loud and shocking clatter and unsettle me badly. I’m completely incorrigible. I knit a hoodie about 20 years ago and hated it so much that I guess it took this long for the memory to wear off, but mercy do I dislike them. I am absolutely reconciled to all the usual parts of a sweater, even in pieces. You’ve got a back, a front, then it’s sleeve island and at worst you’ve got to steel yourself for a collar or a buttonband. Hoodies? You do all that and then there’s another huge part as big as a third sleeve. Who, I ask you, has the strength for that.

4. Apparently I do because stick a fork in me knitters but I am done. All the parts are finished and last night I started sewing it together and you bet your sweet little stash that there is going to be a sweater today (if I have the strength after the training ride to do anything but weep) or tomorrow.

Pattern is 172-Pull à capuche (that’s french for hoodie) and I knit it in Double Sunday because Elliot likes that yarn. (I do too, so no problem. Clearly the training is taking hold.) NOTE THAT THIS PATTERN IS ONLY AVAILABLE IN FRENCH.

5. I’d like to thank Mme Lessard (name made up to protect the innocent) who was my high school French teacher because I’m really sorry I skipped your class so often to go hang out with Sean. (Real name. He wasn’t innocent at all.) He was seriously smokin’ hot and I loved him but in the end the French has been more useful.

6. Nobody on Team Knit has met their fundraising goal yet, which is kinda the times we’re living in I think, but I like to think that knitters rise above. If you are able to do anything to help, we’d for sure appreciate it, but not as much as the clients who rely on us to raise the operating capital for the charities we ride for. Our links are here.

Team Knit has Bike Rally problems. This should surprise no-one, considering that we are all human, and problems are a very human… problem. All of us are struggling to get to the Bike Rally this year. The Bike Rally is a six-day (or 1-day or 3 day, but we are doing the 6 day version) bike ride that goes from Toronto to Montreal at the beginning of August each year. It’s about 660km, and participants camp at night as we go from stop to stop. It raises money for several ASO’s (AIDS Service Organizations) along the way and for one of them (PWA) it raises the vast bulk of the money they need to provide services at all.

Doing this ride is a huge challenge and one that I’ve met for 14 years now (Ken’s even longer) and every member of Team Knit (except Fenner but she’s just a baby) hasn’t just fundraised and completed the ride multiple times, we’ve also all served as leadership in some capacity (or in my case, most capacities) or another. To do this, you have get over all your barriers, and cope with all your problems and this year Team Knit has a lot of problems. Mine? Mine are mostly related to an aging body that doesn’t always share my training goals, and the phenomenal amount of time it takes to get ready and fundraise. It’s been a ridiculous struggle.

Ken’s problem has a lot to do with this picture (not the knitting, I think he’d tell you that’s the only challenge he’s meeting) but that he’s on the train, again. Ken moved to Ottawa a few years ago and trying to train/be a Team Leader/support everyone else while home is there and work and the ride are happening here is… a problem. He’s on the train a lot.

Jen’s problem is that she’s a full-time working midwife with a practice in another town. She’s on call and away a ton, and the time when she can be on a bike is super limited. She’s using her holidays for training and the ride. I know she’d love to be resting instead but she’s a beast.

Fenner – Fenner’s a teenager who just finished her first year of Uni and is spending her summer planting trees in Northern Ontario. She’ll land home right before the rally and leap on her bike, hoping that the backbreaking work she’s been doing is enough to train her up. Her current problems are black flies (they are so miserable holy s**t) and a lack of internet.

Cam’s problems are a lot like mine – time and work, and like me he couldn’t even get it together for a picture for this post. Cameron is crew again this year – a commitment that takes the same time and moxie. Here, since neither of us could do a picture, take this one from last year.

Since this ride is a fundraiser to support people with AIDS, it’s probably worth mentioning here that AIDS causes pretty big problems for the people who have it. Problems like living or dying, suffering or enjoying happiness, the financial costs of having the virus, or being unable to work because of the virus, or being a child with the virus, or having to suffer the stigma and shame of having the virus and all the consequences and discrimination that entails.

Here we come to the interesting part. For the very largest part, when Team Knit tells people that it’s really hard to get ready for the Rally, that it’s a really big challenge and presents some real difficulties – most sweet, generous and loving people will tell us that we should try and solve our problems by not doing the Rally. They tell us about “self-care” and resting, and that’s it’s okay not to do hard things, and that it is very much okay to prioritize your personal problems, and do you know, I agree with that. I think all of Team Knit would agree that taking care of yourself is important and that sometimes you need to put on your own oxygen mask first. Thing is that doesn’t really hold up if the other person needs the air more than you do. Somewhere near here there is an HIV positive mum who is just like me, and she’s trying to solve her problems too and I don’t know about you, but before I make the decision to prioritize my problems, the scope of our problems would really need to be at least equal, wouldn’t they?

Some other people would tell us that other people’s problems aren’t our responsibility, that we don’t need to stay up at night worrying about HIV/AIDs because it’s got nothing to do with us, but Team Knit firmly rejects the idea that humans have no responsibility for helping each other with their problems. We’re on board no matter where or who they are. (It is worth mentioning too that even if you are the sort of person who is very good at deciding that problems belong to the people experiencing them – HIV/AIDs causes problems for people who don’t have it too – it is a terrific burden on our health and social systems and we’d all be better off without it.)

Some other people will suggest that it won’t matter that much anyway – that HIV/AIDs is such a big problem that even trying to deal with it is folly, and to them I say BAH and you are incorrect knitter. Reset your thinking.

Did you know that for many years running the segment of the United Nations that concerns itself with AIDS has had a target for eliminating it as a health crisis by 2030? That this is possible and real and nothing needs to be invented for it to work? We don’t even need new drugs or more research or a vaccine (although those things would be great). All we need is based on what is possible now. Decent drugs for treatment and prevention, funding and distribution for them, robust testing, and the understanding that we need to remove the stigma and shame around the virus so that people can access those things, and so that other people think it’s important too.

This is so real that Donald Trump said it was his goal in his first State of the Union address in 2019. (Obviously he changed his mind about it as a priority – cancelling USAID without notice wasn’t exactly helpful but I digress.) It is so real that just last month in the 2026 UN Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS they reaffirmed the goal was 2030 and it was adopted by an overwhelming majority of Member States, with 149 votes in favour, 8 against.

149 countries agreed that this is completely and totally doable, if only we have the political and financial will. That’s very much almost all of them.

Amazing news, the Bike Rally can help. Since the plan relies on people finding out that they have HIV/AIDs, receiving the drugs and achieving U=U (Undetectable levels of virus are Un-transmissible) basic community based services like ASO’s can make a real difference today by skipping over the “political will” part. It can simply be our will, yours and Team Knit’s.

Unlike me and the work, or Jen and her shifts or Ken and the distance, or Cam and the time or heavens help her, Fenner and the black flies… this is a problem that we can solve. This is fixable. AIDS as a public health crisis is fixable. Not at some crazy obtuse time in the future either, but within our lifetimes, or even within a few years if enough of us can agree at the same time.

Knitters have been sustaining this event for years and years, and Team Knit is asking you to do it again this year, should your problems be smaller than this one. The cancellation of USAID has meant that global funding for HIV/AIDs is being redirected to support those programs as best they can, and that leaves ASOs all over the world in a lurch, especially as politics in so many places take their eyes off this. If you have any ability to help – even if it’s just the financial equivalent of a few stitches, or if your problems don’t permit that, just forwarding this post around? Team Knit would love that. The best way for us to solve our Bike Rally problems would be if we didn’t need a Bike Rally anymore.

You can find links to our fundraising pages here.

Thanks for even reading this, you have no idea how great we think you are.

Team Knit
(Steph, Ken, Jen, Cam and Fenner.)

I have been fighting the world’s worst case of startitis for a couple of weeks now. At least a couple of times a day I find myself wandering over to the ball winder and swift, sometimes even with yarn in my hands. I’ll think to myself that all of my problems would be solved if I just cast on a new project… a fun project, a fast project, a project that’s going to be different than all my other projects and then I’ll suddenly snap to my senses and plunk the yarn down on the piano near the swift and exercise every ounce of self discipline I’ve managed to grow in my life and walk away. (There is getting to be quite a pile there now.) The canopy of the stash – that uppermost layer that is made up of recently bought yarn or yarn that’s surfaced from the depths because I think I’m going to use it soon… that layer is no longer just the icing on a yarn pile or the garnish on a shelf of stuff. I’ve rootled through it like a wild pig hunting truffles so many times looking for the exact yarn for the perfect project so many times that it’s like someone took a giant shaker full of yarn and sprinkled it round the place. It is yarn chaos.

There are two skeins of yarn on my desk, waiting to be a Ranunculus because I saw the one that Ann knit in a yarn that I just happened to have the yarn for, plus Ann said it was fast and I thought “Oh I bet it is” and the next thing you know I’ve got the yarn in my hands and I’m drifting to the winder again. The next day someone complimented a yellow top that I made a while back and I remembered I had some grey (and blue) and could make another one (or two) of those. That yarn’s on the piano. (The blue is in a basket by the tv.) There’s sock yarn everywhere, stationed around the house like I’m throwing a party and they’re the canapes. There’s a sweater’s worth in a bag by the back door. Yay verily I have even ordered more yarn in a desperate attempt to scratch the itch, and as I type there’s a rainbow themed project sitting right beside my laptop and I was just telling myself that it would be stupid not to start (and finish) that right now because it is Pride, after all. If not now, when?

Now, normally I don’t fight back this much. The urge comes over me to start something new and I go with it. It’s not a moral victory to control that urge, it’s not like I believe that good people are monogamous knitters and bad people are… me. Knitting is my passion and it makes me happy and if I can’t indulge in it whenever and however I want then what’s the point? It’s supposed to be fun. Cast on whatever you want. Do it. Do it now. So.. why am I resisting?

Meet the two projects I’ve promised myself that I’ll finish before I start anything new. This here? That’s Elliot’s Birthday sweater. Yeah, yeah his birthday is in early April. Usually if i wasn’t feeling a project I’d set it aside, come back to it later – but Elliot’s asked after this sweater, sweetly inquiring if I’d finished it yet and that sort of affection for knitwear should be rewarded. We’re trying to build a certain kind of person, one with a respect for the textile arts and if the kid wants a sweater, I believe that the grandmother code dictates that I have to knit one – and before he outgrows it while it’s still on the needles.

The thing is… I hate it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the yarn (Double Sunday) and it’s a hoodie with a dragon on it so I really dig the idea of the finished sweater too, but I am so not grooving on the intarsia that it’s been sitting in a bag forever. When I started it was like it always is with a new love and everything that is intolerable now was charming then. The pattern’s only in french? J’adore. Fantastique. I’ve been meaning to practice anyway. Who needs Duolingo when you can knit in french? There will be a million ends? No problem, why else am I on earth but for that? Time wore on, the back flew and then the dragon got me. I started setting it aside for longer and longer periods and the more I did that the more complicated it seemed to pick it back up and spend three minutes figuring out where I was. Anyway- last week Elliot asked if I was almost done and the guilt washed over me like a wave. (Especially since I’ve just finished a sweater for me.) I’m done the front and back, I just have to visit Sleeve Island and wander the wastes of Hood Holm.

It’s better than dealing with this – the argyle socks that were supposed to be my May SISC pair have made little progress. (See the way I blame them there? Like they’re the ones who don’t have it together?) These were started promptly after the dragon sweater even though I had already started to remember that I don’t love intarsia, never mind intarsia in the round which is a complete pain in the arse. I’ve restarted these three times and I’m not any happier with them. I know now it’s that I’m using the wrong yarn – this is a vintage Shibui sock yarn from … oh, 20 years ago? At the time of the purchase I remember wondering sort of absently if I’d like a superwash 2-ply for socks and it turns out that suspicion was valid. I don’t like it at all, but I feel like I’ve made a commitment to these socks. I’d like to say that I’m no quitter but I sort of am, especially when it’s something as unimportant as whether or not I finish a pair of socks but somehow I’ve decided that this is a hill I’ll die on. Not only are they not finished, I’ve let them derail my June socks as well, since I was supposed start those when these were finished and well. You see where we are. I blame the yarn and the knowledge that this is what happens when you’re not true to yourself. I knew how I feel about superwash 2-ply for colourwork. I (mostly) remembered how I feel about intarsia. I dwell now in the land of regret, but I’m going to dig myself out. Soon. Right now I’m leaving now to go ride my bike 100km (I am behind on training for the Bike Rally) and I’ll write about Team Knit in the next few days (I am behind on that too.) If you were contemplating a donation today would be a great day for that.

I’m sick today – some minor sort of dread lurgy the main symptoms of which seems to be low self-esteem and the overwhelming urge to lay around glumly watching the Olympics. It’s a raging snow-ice storm outside and I am so sick of winter that I can scarcely look out the window, so I thought I’d break up the misery of the day by telling you a little story.

A little over a week ago I got a phone call that someone had an emergency (minor) and needed my help. I immediately booked a flight to the (even more) frozen (even further) North and set about packing my knitting. I’d be gone a week, I was going somewhere really cold, and to my way of thinking this somehow equalled a metric tonne of knitting that I’d be doing. I put my Self-Imposed-Sock-Club socks in there, then I put the shawl I’m working on in there, then I went and got all the extra yarn for the shawl and added that. Then I frowned and fetched a little baby set that I’m working on and have barely started and laid that on top. This I thought, this was a decent amount of knitting. Loads really. Then I opened instagram saw the Canada Mittens and thought – I should make those. I should make those right now. Actually (as the Olympics flickered on the screen near me) I realized that all the knitting in my suitcase was trash and I should make several pairs of those right now. Lucky for me the yarn shop that made the pattern and had the yarn (Briggs & Little sport, the OG Canadian brand for yarn) is nearby-ish and they have been super quick to ship in the past, and so I ordered a ball of each of the red and white, then paused… hovered my hand over the cart to checkout online and… ordered more. 2 red and 2 white. That’s lots. I’m good. I added a little note that said something like “Quickest possible delivery please” noted that I was leaving on Sunday (this was Friday and let me assure you this seemed really reasonable to me) and clicked send.

Almost immediately someone awesome emailed and said no. It was too late, there’s no delivery pickup on weekends so the soonest they could mail it was Monday. Did I want to come get it, they asked? I did. I did very much want to come and get it, but Galt House of Yarn is in Cambridge and I was in Toronto and Joe had the car and so it was a no. I thought about it for a minute (I cannot stress to you how much I wanted this yarn right away) and then asked the next best thing. Could they ship it to my destination- send it North? They could – swiftly the shipping address was changed, I was assured it would arrive there at the end of the week, and I set about maturely coping with the disappointment of waiting a week for yarn I wanted right now.

Apparently I was both terrible at this and transparent about it, because the next day (Saturday) Joe offered to drive to the shop and pick it up for me. “Really?” I asked “No…” he said “I’m just trying to torture you.” That was a joke it turned out, and Joe left for the yarn shop in the afternoon. For my part, I took Elliot skating and sent a quick email to the yarn shop telling them that my glorious spouse was on his way to get the order. A little bit later – when Joe was pretty much in the parking lot of the shop, they emailed back to say that my glorious spouse was no match for their intrepid shipping staff and that they had already shipped it – a staff member choosing to do me a solid by taking it to Canada Post themselves so it would have a head start getting up North.

I sat there, and then I laughed out loud. I’d been defeated by fabulousness and fantastic people who were so dedicated to getting me my yarn that I couldn’t have it, and in that moment I snapped, and told Joe to get more. “Just get it” I texted. “Just tell them to give you a skein of red and a skein of white just like the two red and two white they shipped. Just say that.”

Now Joe’s been a knitting adjacent spouse for a long time, so he didn’t say anything. He didn’t say “Hold on, you’ve already got this yarn coming could you perhaps … wait a few days?” He didn’t say “How many pairs of these mittens are you fixing to make Steph?” He didn’t say “My bride, my sweet – are you sure?” He said nothing. He especially didn’t say anything when after reflecting for a few seconds, I texted again and said “Double that. Just tell them to sell you what they shipped.” Moments later Joe walked into that yarn shop and said that, and you know what? The yarn shop didn’t say anything about it either.

He brought home the yarn, I cast on my mittens, putting two balls into my carry on, and put the other two balls (I wound them) into my suitcase – even though there would be four balls arriving in a few days. Nobody said a single word about that either. I got on the plane, I stayed there for a week before coming home with this much of ONE mitten knit and pretty much all eight skeins intact.

Further to that, I do not feel like this was a learning opportunity and I am happy with all my choices.

Peace out. Go Canada Go.

PS – probably worth mentioning that there are one or two spots left at the Spring Retreat at Port Ludlow in a few weeks, if you’d like to talk about yarn in person, and if you happen to be more of the day-tripper type, there’s room in Debbi’s ace class where you make a custom dummy out of ducktape and an old teeshirt. email to info@strungalong.ca if you’re the type.

I am in limbo – I just finished my SISC socks, they’re off the needles and gone for a bath, and I don’t pull the next bag until the 1st of the month so I’ve got the littlest of sock breaks. I’m working on that Craghill Shawl but it doesn’t have a deadline and I’m under-motivated. The rows are getting long and I think I’m into a cheaper thrill right now.

I am really, really motivated to make a baby set but the yarn hasn’t arrived (I think it might today) and once that happens I am all in on that, since the baby might have gotten slightly ahead of me there. I need to start a sweater for Elliot (he has a special request) but the yarn for that is en route as well. I was about to wander aimlessly upstairs and turn my attention to one of the multitude of projects I’ve put down over the last months, when I thought to have a look at “The Big Plan.”

The Big Plan™ is far less fancy (or big, or trademarked) than it sounds, but like the Self-Imposed Sock Club (SISC) and The Long Range Planning Box for completed items, it’s one of my better ideas. You know how you’ll be minding your own business and you’ll see a project or have an idea or remember there’s an occasion coming up and you think “oh, I’ve got to get on that this year”. When that happens to me, I open my phone or computer and go to a note called “The Big Plan” and jot down whatever it happens to be. On there right now is a sewing project I don’t want to forget to get ahead on for next Christmas, and a note that a friend who makes soap could use some hand knit facecloths for her birthday, some ornaments I want to give as a Hallowe’en gift that it would be smart to make in the summer, that I need to gather pinecones for something else -whenever I see them through the year, and that (and this is that part that is relevant to this post) this is a year I have to knit and make another Advent Calendar, and that it would be super smart to knit a few of the ornaments each month so that it can’t get on top of me. (There’s also a note to buy the felt to make it when I see it on sale but that’s not as important to you.)

So- in this perfect moment of in-betwixt idleness, I’m going to fill my needles with a few of those little things and tuck them away (in The Long Range Planning Box, obviously) so that November Stephanie has only nice things to say about me.

If you’d like to play along, today I’m making a teeny hat and a maybe a tiny sock. I bet the baby sweater yarn is here when I’m done.

The kettle has just boiled and I’ve made myself a cup of tea. It is frigid outside. Absolutely bonkers cold and it’s only going to get colder and more snow is coming. (There is already rather a lot.) Each morning as I leave to “walk to work” I’ve been grabbing my skates from their hook by the front door and they hang over my shoulder cheerfully swaying as I walk a few minutes to an outdoor rink in a local park and have a few turns on the ice before heading back home. If this sounds ridiculously romantic, well it is – especially if you can ignore that I am an absolute crap skater, though practice can only help.

(Last week Elliot and I went for a skate and he’s just learning so spends as much time falling down as he does gliding around. After a little while he said “Wow Grammy you are such a good skater!” and then promptly fell down again. I can honestly say that nobody has ever, ever said that about my skating before and I highly recommend taking a young learner with you if you struggle with your self-esteem. I do not recommend taking them more than a few times though because by next week he’s going to be better than me for sure.)

Today was cold enough that I didn’t take my skates, I couldn’t imagine the minutes without mittens putting on and tying them up and I just went for my walk. I always listen to audiobooks as I walk (or clean, it’s the only way I can bribe myself into doing it) but today I didn’t because I wanted to think without interruption. I walked along, bundled in knits top to bottom (and saw several people wearing leg warmers and thought about knitting some but I think I will wait and see if that urge is still there when it’s not -25 since I have never wanted them before) and thought long and hard about what I wanted to write today.

Today is my Twenty-second Blogiversary and that means that 22 years ago I sat down and wrote and posted my very first blog entry and the minute I did that I stepped through the door it cracked open and nothing has been the same since. I tell you some version of that every year on this day and I always look for a different way to say it, and that’s what I was thinking about as I walked. It was still what I was thinking about when I came home and knitted a little bit, and made some soup for lunch.

(These are my Self-Imposed Sock Club socks for January- I tried to take them outside so the light would really show off the colours but there was nowhere that wasn’t too %^&^%ing snowy so I put them on the spare bed. Enjoy. Yarn is Indigodragonfly in Spoken Four, last years Bike Rally fundraising yarn, and the pattern is Defying Gravity and it is very fun.)

In the end I decided to tell you about something that happened not too long ago. I was at an event with lots of other knitters and we were knitting and chatting the way we do, and the way only knitters can. (Everyone else takes it so personally when you’re reading a chart, I’m listening to you for crying out loud.) The topic of The Blog came up and someone said they really love The Blog and someone else said “Well, sure but the blog is dead.” Now – before you get your back up on my behalf (I love that about you) there is no need. A big part of me can agree with them. For sure this space isn’t what it was. Like all things there is change and I get it. Gone are the days that I posted five times a week. I hear them, I respect that and I didn’t say anything or feel hurt. I did start thinking though, because while that little piece of me could see their point, a larger part of me wanted to push back hard because in my heart, that feels like a ridiculous statement.

It stayed with me, and I’ve reflected on it often. (Don’t worry it wasn’t that long ago, I’m not consumed.) I can’t tell you how desperately I feel like The Blog is not dead – is it just wishful thinking – something I’m holding onto because I’m not great at letting things go? This is one of my best and worst traits, so I always consider it. I’m GREAT at holding on by my very fingernails and this has both caused me loss and saved things that were important. Was this just my point of view? It wasn’t until I started to write about this that I realized the answer.

As I wrote that this person had said the blog was dead, I noticed a detail. Do you? When I wrote it as I heard them, I typed “the blog”. When I wrote about my feelings that it was still here, I hit that shift key. The Blog. I have written before about what the family and I call you – you are The Blog. We’ll ask ourselves what The Blog would think, or wonder if The Blog would like something. Around these parts The Blog isn’t software, memory, words and pictures. The Blog is me writing to you. Your comments coming back to me – connections made here and in real life. It’s me working on something you made me interested in, it’s you trying a technique I wrote about in 2017. It’s me having a snapshot of you in my mind because I’ve built it out of a collage made of your hundreds of comments over the years. It’s you knowing that Amanda can play the violin – or how this family fared during the pandemic. It’s me understanding what you love because I love it too – it’s you knowing Charlotte’s name. It is you introducing yourself to me in another town and me not really knowing who you are until you tell me your email address or username – and then in that moment having you bloom into the person I know from this town, that you’re a neighbour in The Blog. I’ve seen your socks.

I guess I think too that The Blog isn’t dead because at least once a week I get an email from someone who is reading the whole thing- from beginning to end and they want me to know that they really had their scene scrambled when their mum died too – or that it was helpful to read things I wrote about being a young mother – and that the things I wrote about the value of parenting made them feel better about how absolutely trashed the house their happy kids are playing in. Or they write and tell me something they thought about when they were reading about one of my multitude of insecurities because they thought I might feel less insecure when I read it. (They are usually right.)

A little while ago someone who reads this blog and leaves comments sent me an email and thanked me for a recipe I put here years ago. It was great that she wrote because it just so happened that I was finishing a book she had recommended in a comment.

Another yarn break – I’m knitting Craghill. I think it’s pretty gorgeous.

Essentially – I have never thought of The Blog as something that just I do. We are woven together in this place, knit into one fabric, use whatever textile metaphor you’d like to this is twenty-two years of books and recipes and patterns and bad socks and good sweaters and baby blankets and together we are The Blog, and you just don’t feel dead to me at all. As a matter of fact, I think we’ll be just fine.

Much love, and thank you for everything. Meet you here soon.

Stephanie

PS: This year I’ll ride my 15th Bike Rally. To be honest it was a harder decision this year but in the end the world could use all the good acts it can get. It has become tradition to kick off my fundraising on my blogiversary, so here we are. It’s also become tradition for your donations to be the number of years we’re celebrating here, or some multiple – 22, 44, 66… that way the fundraising staff processing them is super bewildered, especially when the explaination is simply “That’s the knitters.” The link to my page is here if you’re so inclined, and it’s also a great day to recognize Ken, the patron saint of The Blog, since he’s the one who gave it to me in the first place. His Bike Rally link is here.

I think by now we’ve all seen a version of that meme, the one where a person says “oh, wow- what a long week it’s been” and someone else says “Sharon, it’s Monday.” That right there, that exact thing is how I feel about the winter right now. Winter has never been my favourite, which is a terribly sad thing for a Canadian but I’ve worked really hard over the years on coming up with some ways to feel better, to like it better – I don’t think I’m ever going to be the sort of person who looks out a window as the first autumn leaves flutter from the trees and joyfully exclaims OH WOW it’s almost winter, but I did think I was getting a grip. I have Winter Systems™, I’ve found a winter sport I like – I have become an okayish skiier to be sure and that does make it feel like there’s a reason for winter. I’ve learned that I need to get outside in the winter, to let whatever meagre light there is shine on me, a few years ago I started walking to and from work in the winter, even though I work at home. I get up, have my coffee and then dress and go around the block back to the house and start work. I go the other way when I’m done at my desk and at least that gives me a sense of rhythm and a little bit of outside time. I lean into candles and twinkle lights and try to embrace the idea of a season of rest and renewal, preparing for the hustle of summer. I walk in the snow. I go to the gym and run on treadmills and ride inside bikes and I lift heavy things. I knit heaps. I read a lot, and up until the last few years I write a lot too.

Enter this winter which is slowly kicking my systems into a frozen demoralized heap. Hold on, I’m snow washing some woollies and it’s time to bring it in before it’s dark. (See? It’s not like I don’t try to make the most of it.) Do you know about snow washing? Essentially you just put your woollies in the snow and you can put snow on them or, if you time it right you can just let nature do that part. Leave it there for a little bit, then go back out, rub a little snow around on them, give them a proper shake and bring them inside. They’ll be fresh, clean(er), smell good and you’ll have given at least one day of the (*&^%^Ying winter a reason for existing.

it hasn’t helped that this winter is particularly dark (both metaphorically and meteorologically) So few sunny days, some weird rainy days that are worse than snow, the news is terrible every time I look at it, that miserable rain was mixed in with frigid days that are too cold to do anything really, or days like today that are snowy and paralyzing. It seems to me that this winter I get up and it’s dark, the hours pass gloomily while I turn on lights and make tea and then before you know it the night is coming and though it’s only 4:30 or so it feels like the day is shot. Hibernating has never made more sense but it’s not doing much for my mood.

A few days ago I woke up and it was too dark to do anything (again, here I write both meteorologically and metaphorically) and I finally decided to do something about it. I immediately went for a walk (two, I walked to and from “work”) and have everyday since. I grabbed some delicious knitting I’ve been meaning to get to and keep putting off – The Craghill Shawl, using some (sadly discontinued) Weld from Hudson and West. It is squishy and gorgeous and giving me a lot of happiness right now, the yarn equivalent of eating a bowl of oatmeal and that gold colour is like a ray of sunshine.

We made a ski date (sort of) and though we don’t have a ton of cash, I have not ruled out taking all my aeroplan points and getting the *&^% out of here. (Realistically there’s too much going on here to do that but it is a really great fantasy that is working for me.) I doubled down on planning meals we like, I went for a walk again. I texted a friend. I made my favourite tea – the one I’ve been hoarding for … when? Can’t imagine what I was saving it for if it’s not now. I tuned my wheels on St. Distaff’s day (the 7th January) and got something yummy on that too.

I cleaned a drawer. I trashed the book I was reading that I didn’t like. I made sure my daily vitamin has enough D in it. I decided to order some yarn and I ate an orange.

I wrote to you.

In short- I decided that I’m not going to wait for this winter to get brighter, I’m turning the lights on myself. Did I miss anything that might help?

Well, spoiler alert… Ranunculus fits just fine. This was not at all a guarantee, despite the rather ridiculous number of times that I checked before binding off and going back to do the neck. I felt compelled to pop back and tell you all how it was fitting, not just because I mentioned that I was worried it was going to be too short, but because the very last picture I posted of it on instagram looked like this.

Let’s back up to how I got there – which I admit was a very dramatic moment – one where I went to pull a finished sweater over my head and lo, it did not go. On the upside, I did stop worrying about the length for a while. Here’s what happened. I told you all in the last post that since I changed the gauge on this sweater (I went down a needle size or so to make a fabric I like better. What the heck, it’s my sweater.) That meant though, that I wasn’t at all sure how many I wanted to cast on for a top down sweater, so I skipped it. I cast on provisionally after the neck, and just started working the sweater. When I was done, I came back, picked up all the stitches, and worked the neckband.

Here’s the thing though. Did I do any figuring? Did I follow up on my original thought and have a little chat with my inner knitter about how I was worried it would be too small because I went down a needle size, and perhaps reflect upon how none of that had changed? Yeah verily, did I look upon the knitting and think “Well Stephanie, this is exactly the moment one knits a swatch for” and having though that, picked up the swatch that I did indeed knit, and count how many stitches it would take to go around my noggin? Did I?

No, gentle knitter, I did not. Even though the swatch sat nearby, even though (sort of unbelievably) I had a tape measure nearby… nope. I just took a look at that neckline and decided to just smash the question with the weight of my experience and thought “Looks right.” and just went for it. It was not right. (See above.)

Anyway, obviously I ripped back the cast on, and all the ribbing, and then I did the math and NOW this sweater both goes over my head and …

It is the right length. I knew it.

Sweater: Ranunculus, Yarn; (Cottage Fingering, 50% Merino, 20% Linen, 15% Silk, 15% Cotton) Modifications, changed the gauge, provisional neckline, fewer stitches for the neckband itself – oh, and I only did the short rows in the back, and I made them wider. It fits me better that way.

For now, I’m off to bed. Jen and I are going on a training ride in the morning, and I have to get up at 5:30am to make it happen, and that is not a thing that is really in my wheelhouse without getting to bed early. If I survive, I’ll pop back and tell you a story about some socks.

(PS. If you wanted to sponsor me or Jen tomorrow to encourage two rather old soft women to ride like the wind, you can do it by clicking on our names. We start to ride at 7, and can use whatever encouragement you can offer. )

Stephanie

Jen

I was in a yarn shop a while ago and I saw a sweater and I loved it. It was short sleeved and summery and knit out of this great yarn (Cottage Fingering, 50% Merino, 20% Linen, 15% Silk, 15% Cotton) and thanks to that plant/silk ingredients, it had fantastic drape and weight. It was oversized but a little elegant, and looked super wearable. For years and years I’ve been smitten with this sort of “post-apocolyptic my clothes are all rags but I still look fabulous like the matrix” vibe, but me being me I’m pretty sure that all I ever manage is the first part of that phrase, but it never stops me from buying stuff that I think might take me over the line. The point is that I was in this shop and this sample was so great, and so I looked at the tag and was absolutely stunned to see that it was a sweater that I’ve looked at a thousand times and had no interest in – Ranunculus. (That first picture alone – the waif in the giant version was enough to put me off.) This version though… before I even knew what happened to me I had the yarn in my bag.

Some months later (like a couple weeks ago) I decided that I would knit the thing. I’ve got a shelf in the stash room where I put things that are “next” and it’s been taunting me from there so I dove in and swatched, wondering if that would take the edge off. It didn’t. It did convince me to go down an needle size and redo a little math so it would be a slightly tighter gauge but still give me the ease I wanted, and that convinced me to cast on provisionally at the beginning of the yoke and come back to the neckband at the end. Off I went.

It’s a fun knit, I give you that – I can see why so many people have made it. Fun little stitch pattern on the yoke, big needles… the yarn is a bit slow, so it could have been faster, but I was at the divide in no time, and cruising cheerfully down the body and almost ready to start the ribbing when the trouble started.

The trouble took the form of the voice of my inner knitter and she said “It’s too short”. Is it? I thought? My inner knitter has a lot experience so I stopped and measured. It was not too short, so I knit a couple more rounds to reassure her, and then started to think about the ribbing again. “It’s still too short” she muttered. I measured it again, this time lying it on top of a sweater that I like the length of, comparing the total length of the sweater. It was not too short, so I did a few more rounds to humour her and got ready to do the ribbing. (Oddly, the sweater didn’t seem to get any longer when I added those five rounds, which should have been a clue that something else was going on.) Debbi and I were together for the retreat at Port Ludlow at the time, so I announced the milestone. Debbi creased her brow and said “Huh. Really? It looks too short.” Now Debbi has a ton of knitting experience as well, so that smartened me up again.

“Really? I said? I’ve measured it twice… It’s totally the right length -remember it’s getting ribbing so it will be longer than it looks now…” Debbi brought out the big guns and raised an eyebrow, and then suggested I try it on. I dutifully got some knitters cord and slipped it on, then popped it over my head. It WAS too short, but by the length of the ribbing so it’s perfect. I knew from my swatch it was going to relax but not really grow, and I told Debbi that. “It’s the right length” I said, admiring it in the mirror again.

“Great” Debbi said, but she didn’t mean great. She meant she thought the sweater was too short. I knit a few more rounds, then measured it again, then held it up to the other sweater again, then tried it on again. It was the perfect length. Debbi and my inner voice shrugged and I started the ribbing. The whole time I was knitting that ribbing, it wouldn’t stop dogging me. Every few rounds I repeated the ritual. Measure, compare, try on. It took forever to knit it because I kept stopping to do all this – and the whole time it wasn’t just Debbi and my inner knitter who thought it was too short – at my birthday party I cast off and was about to start the sleeves and I held it up to show off to Amanda. She made a face and said “I’m surprised you wanted a cropped sweater…” I looked down, trying to reconcile what she’d said with what I was seeing. It isn’t a cropped sweater – it ends at my hip bone. I measured again. I compared again, I tried it on again. It is the right length. I don’t know why it doesn’t look like it is, but it is. Maybe it’s that it doesn’t have have a neck band yet – or that it is very wide. It has tons of ease and maybe the proportions are making all of us think that it should be longer if it is wider?

I’m about done the sleeves now (I think they are too short as well) and have thought constantly about unpicking my bind-off (I’d rather not it’s slubby yarn and a super pain) and adding more length, but I’m committed to staying the course. I’ve been down this road before and I have a too-long sweater upstairs to prove it. I have swatched. I have measured. I have compared, I have tried on. It is the right length. It is not too short. I don’t know what game this sweater is running, but I’m not falling for it.

Right?